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Topic: Percentage of starter to be used in relation to flour (Read 2548 times)

Recently I activated the sourdough starter that Pizzaneapolitana cultivated (Camaldoli). I´ve used it successfully to make loaves, but now want to use it for pizza, using baker´s percentages.

My question is, considering that I followed Ed´s instructions as far as activating, and the starter had a thick hotcake batter consistency, are there any percentages that I can follow when using starter? I´m really clueless here, and although I´ve been searching about this online maybe I haven´t found the right source yet. I´d like to weigh the starter, the same way I measure flour, water and salt. Any orientation would be greatly appreciated!

I use 10% starter by weight of the entire weight of the dough (so for a final dough weight of 1800 grams I use 180 grams of fully activated starter). My Camaldoli is approx. 54% flour which is on the thick side.

10% is higher than others around this board use and I confess I haven't really tweaked the amount much to see what would happen if I used less. That is on my list of things to try soon.

Thanks for the tip! Interesting to hear that you do it based on entire dough weight. How long is your cold rest?

Shortly after posting this new topic I read one of bakerbill´s posts where he used Varsano´s recipe - Jeff´s Famous Pizza. I read there that some use anywhere from 3-20%. I´m going to try the less is more approach.

Thanks for the tip! Interesting to hear that you do it based on entire dough weight. How long is your cold rest?

Shortly after posting this new topic I read one of bakerbill´s posts where he used Varsano´s recipe - Jeff´s Famous Pizza. I read there that some use anywhere from 3-20%. I´m going to try the less is more approach.

How much of the starter you use may depend on whether you want to use the starter for leavening purposes or whether you want to use an amount that will be much greater and serve as a preferment and confer attributes of preferments on your dough.

For example, for a naturally leavened dough for a Neapolitan pizza, the amount of starter to use can be, say, 1-5% by weight of water. That number can be converted to a percent of the weight of flour (or even as a percent of the total dough weight) if you have all of the ingredients and weights for the recipe and they are all workable. When I made naturally-leavened Neapolitan doughs, I tended to work at the high end of the 1-5% range. When I wanted to use a preferment approach, I used 15-20% by weight of flour. That range came from a member, bakerboy (not bakerbill), a baker who used that range when he made pizzas (he now runs a bakery). At one point, Jeff V. used around 40%, although it could have been lower depending on how he calculated his percent. pftaylor at one point used around 8% (by weight of flour) for his Raquel dough formulation, but I believe he recently lowered that amount to 5% (peak activity) by weight of flour.

As you can see, there are many possibilities depending on your objective, and it is likely that other members can offer up even more suggestions based on their experiences.

I use very small amounts of starter following pizzanapoletana's advice, about 10g (a teaspoon) for two 300g pies which is 1.6% of total weight. My pies are prepared on a thurs or friday for sunday. Depending on the ambient temperature, they sometimes need knocked down on the morning before baking, other times i will leave them out for 8 hours after prep, refrigerate them for a few days and then take them out on the morning ready for cooking that afternoon.